


Tipping the Scales

by akaparalian



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Dragons, First Meetings, Fluff, M/M, Prince Eric "Bitty" Bittle (who is also a knight), Prince Jack Zimmermann (who is also a dragon)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-09-29 08:23:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17199995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akaparalian/pseuds/akaparalian
Summary: Prince Eric, training for a tournament to prove his worth as a knight, goes for a ride in the woods. He accidentally finds a dragon, who accidentallybecamea dragon because he pissed off the wrong witch.Eric had heard what felt like every possible disparaging comment at least ten times over. A little princeling from the South who thought himself a knight, with no idea what he was getting into, coming up here to the northern kingdoms; it was all well and good to want to travel, to see the world before he was to spend the rest of his days watching over his own lands in his father’s place — because, no doubt, he would give up soon enough on his fantasy of living out his days as a knight, and settle into managing the family estate easily enough — but clearly he was soft, and not cut out for being so far from home all on his own. He hadn’t even brought a proper guard retinue, and wasn’t that strange, a little thing like him without hardly anyone to watch over him? And what could he possibly gain from going out into the mountains all alone?Well, he thought triumphantly, as he looked down at the dragon. What indeed.





	Tipping the Scales

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KittPurson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittPurson/gifts).



> Happy holidays, KittPurson! I saw your request for medieval fantasy and immediately knew that that was what I had to write. This setting is so much fun for me to play with, and I just loved your suggestion of dragon!Jack as well — though I added a slightly Beauty and the Beast-y twist to it. I hope you enjoy!
> 
> I would have included Shitty in here somewhere but he would have been... just a very bad knight. *slaps knee*
> 
> Thanks to Laura for the beta!!

Eric had heard what felt like every possible disparaging comment at least ten times over. A little princeling from the South who thought himself a knight, with no idea what he was getting into, coming up here to the northern kingdoms; it was all well and good to want to travel, to see the world before he was to spend the rest of his days watching over his own lands in his father’s place — because, no doubt, he would give up soon enough on his fantasy of living out his days as a knight, and settle into managing the family estate easily enough — but clearly he was soft, and not cut out for being so far from home all on his own. He hadn’t even brought a proper guard retinue, and wasn’t that strange, a little thing like him without hardly anyone to watch over him? And what could he possibly gain from going out into the mountains all alone?

Well, he thought triumphantly, as he looked down at the dragon. What indeed. 

—

Eric hadn’t come _looking_ for the dragon, at least not particularly. The kingdom of Samwell was known for a great many things, but dragons weren’t exactly a local claim to fame; he had come more for the sake of proving himself in the annual tournaments, which were very well-regarded and which were always attended by a number of very famous knights from kingdoms all around. But he had been out riding when he found what were most certainly dragon tracks, and suddenly the rumors and whispers he’d heard several nights previous in one of the taverns in town started to seem quite a bit more respectable than they had then, especially as he’d been three pints deep at the time. What was there to do, then, but follow the tracks? Dragons were quite rare these days, but not rare enough that the old tales of slavering fire-breathing maiden-kidnapping beasts held any sway; anyone who even pretended to know what they were talking about had known for centuries that dragons mostly kept to themselves, and the only time they even got particularly aggressive was if you fussed with their hoards. Eric loved to fuss with things, but he was smarter than to fuss with a dragon’s hoard, at least.

So off he’d gone into the woods, leaving the well-travelled path he’d been riding on in favor of following the dragon tracks, which crossed over the road but did not follow it. Instead, they made a beeline for a nearby mountain range, leading a little ways past the road and then disappearing, from which point Eric could only assume the dragon had taken off. Still, the heading was clear enough, and a mountain was a perfectly reasonable place for a dragon to be going, so that, Eric decided, was where he would be going, too.

The woods were certainly too thick for a dragon — no wonder it had chosen to fly instead — but were thin enough that Eric and Signore, his proud silvery Andalusian gelding, encountered little trouble. It was quite a pleasant ride, actually, until he started to get into the foothills of the mountains proper, and everything started to get colder, and steeper, and rockier. But they had come this far, and Signore was very sure-footed, and, Eric decided as afternoon began to turn to evening and he knew he would need to either turn back now or make camp for the night, no one would be able to deny him as a knight if he went up into the mountains and met a dragon and came back to tell about it. _Princes_ didn’t do things like that; knights did. Besides, he was getting more and more curious about the dragon as the evening wore on — what breed was it? What color? What was its hoard like? Had it been in the area long, or was it new, which would explain why its presence amounted only to a few rumors in dimly-lit taverns? — and it wouldn’t do to have to go back to town and wonder, when he could keep going up the mountain and find out.

Camp that night was a bit sparse, because he’d fully expected to find himself back in his nice warm bed in town at the end of his ride, but he always kept enough supplies on him to make camp for several nights at least, just in case. Queen Bittle had raised no fool. Signore happily munched at the undergrowth while Eric sat huddled by his crackling campfire, looking up at the mountain above and wondering.

By the time he woke early the next morning, he was more than ready to get on his way again, but the going was unfortunately much slower up the mountain than it had been through the woods. Still, he and Signore made relatively good time — the gelding had been Eric’s since the day he turned 10, and they had grown up together, and made a very good pair — and by mid-afternoon, they were high enough up the mountain that Eric began looking for signs of a dragon’s cave specifically, knowing that each and every rocky outcropping was a potential landing place and each and every cave could possibly conceal a hoard.

There were a few promising options which he dismounted to explore, but no luck. Each time, he had to leave Signore at the entrance to the cave, because as good a horse as he was, he was not too keen on going inside any caves, especially not caves which might or might not contain dragons. None of the caves Eric explored showed any sign of draconic activity, though, and as he hadn’t seen the dragon flying overhead, either, or any other tracks or clues, he was starting to feel a bit disheartened. He and Signore continued picking their way up the mountain, but more and more he felt that he should have just continued on his intended ride through the woods yesterday and then gone back into town. What was he thinking, coming out looking for a dragon with no real idea where he might find one, other than “Up that enormous mountain”? _Honestly_. So much for being taken seriously as a knight. Maybe he should cut his losses now and turn around; there was no sense continuing when —

“Oh!” Eric blurted suddenly, looking down at the ground, and, in fact, down at what were very clearly a set of dragon prints in a half-melted bank of slushy snow, leading directly toward the mouth of a cave which stretched into the face of the mountain. Not as big a cave as he might have expected, but then, not all dragons were massive; some were only a little larger than horses, and Signore could certainly fit into that cave.

Signore _wouldn’t_ go into the cave, as he proved a few moments later, stamping his hooves and snorting and pinning his ears back flat in distaste when Eric tried to convince him to, but he _could_ have; the entrance to the cave was tall enough and wide enough. And, Eric discovered when he gave up on getting Signore inside and left him tied to a rock instead, the interior of the cave was quite a bit bigger than its entrance would suggest: it stretched farther back than he could see, and the ceiling opened up, too, over what almost seemed to be a wide, deep room. There was a gentle slope down into a sort of basin, and in the basin there was a dragon.

It was, indeed, not much bigger than a horse, and it seemed to be sleeping, its wings folded tightly around its body. Without a doubt, the dragon was beautiful: dark charcoal-gray scales covered most of its sleeping form, darkening to black on the forelimbs but lightening to an almost whitish color on the belly. Its wings were tinted slightly blue, and the horns which curled out of its forehead and over its neck were an absolutely impossible shade of gold, so golden, in fact, that for a moment Eric almost wondered if they weren’t made of metal.

The dragon wasn’t adorned in gold or silks or precious jewels, though, as some dragons liked to be to display their hoards, and, indeed, Eric realized as he took another look around that it wasn’t entirely clear whether or not this dragon even _had_ a hoard. Perhaps it was just hidden somewhere else, where every random knight who wandered in couldn’t find it and trash it, or something, he thought reasonably; after all, the dragon had no reason to suspect anyone that came to this cave wouldn’t do such a thing. There were treasure hunters in every kingdom who claimed they’d made all the money they needed for an entire lifetime by raiding a dragon’s hoard.

On which note, while the dragon continued to sleep peacefully, its sides rising and falling rhythmically, Eric didn’t doubt that it would be none too pleased to find him there when it woke if he seemed at all suspicious. Best to announce himself, then; surely no thief would walk in and state his name and purpose. But how to do it? He didn’t want to startle the dragon too much, either, by rousing it from sleep, though it didn’t seem like he really had any other options.

Eric hesitated, glanced around the cave again, took a wary step backwards, cleared his throat, and called, “Hello?”

Immediately, the dragon’s eyes snapped open, and in an instant it went from curled up asleep to standing on all fours, its wings flared out in warning, its neck reared back. Its eyes were blue, so blue and so pale as to be piercing, and Eric felt his mouth go a little dry in awe at the sight.

“Who are you?” the dragon hissed, in a distinctly masculine voice with an accent that Eric placed with some surprise as being similar to that of the far northern kingdoms, many miles away from here, and stalked forward a step. Eric immediately held up his hands in a sign of surrender. 

“I’m Eric, Eric Bittle. Um, Prince Eric Bittle, of the southern kingdoms,” he babbled, taking a step back to maintain the distance between them, both out of a genuine thread of fear and out of a hope of conveying a sense of respect.

The dragon’s eyes only narrowed further at the words, and he stepped forward again, snarling a little. “And why are you here, Prince Eric Bittle of the southern kingdoms?”

“Well, I came to Samwell to compete in the tourney, because — oh, here, in your cave?” Eric said, cursing himself a little. Even if the dragon didn’t chase him out with fire licking at his heels, he would certainly think Eric an idiot. “I saw your tracks cross the road at the foot of the mountain, and — well, I was curious?”

The dragon paused in his approach. “Curious?”

“Well, yes,” Eric said, blinking quickly. “I’ve never met a dragon before.”

The dragon settled back on his haunches a little, shooting Eric a look which was, blessedly, more speculative than stormy. “And you said you’re here for the tournament?” He paused a moment, then added in a slightly more doubtful tone, “To compete?”

“Yes,” Eric said, trying not to sound hurt. A dragon’s opinion of his decision to compete probably shouldn’t matter all that much to him, but if anything, it only served as a reminder of all the doubtful looks he’d gotten from humans about his qualifications as a knight, versus as a princeling playing about in armor.

The dragon paused a moment more, then nodded, as if to himself, and turned suddenly away from Eric, stalking off towards the back of the cave, into the darkness. He looked back only briefly over his shoulder to call out, “Follow me,” and after just a moment of standing there frozen in shock, Eric hurried to comply.

—

Of all the things Eric might have expected to find in the back reaches of a dragon’s cave, a cooking fire and a kettle and tea seemed among the least likely, but here he was, brewing himself a cup of tea while the dragon looked on sort of balefully.

Eric so _badly_ wanted to ask why the dragon had a kettle — or a cookfire — or _tea —_ but such questions seemed like they perhaps might elicit more snarling and being menacing on the dragon’s part, so he opted for a safer query instead. “Do you have a name?” he asked, as he watched over the fire mindfully and waited for the kettle to boil.

The dragon snorted. “Of course I have a name.”

Eric waited several long seconds, and when it seemed no answer was forthcoming, he prodded, “And what is it, if I might ask?”

“Oh.” The dragon almost seemed surprised at the question, which Eric found mind-boggling. “It’s Jack.”

Jack. A dragon named Jack — _not_ a traditionally draconic name in the least; Eric had been expecting something along the lines of Emryg or Tiephurun or something else appropriately glottal and aggressive-sounding — who kept tea in his cave and didn’t appear to have a hoard of any kind. Eric had stumbled onto something truly unusual, it seemed.

“Well, it’s lovely to meet you, Jack,” he said, trying for a smile and well aware that it probably came out a bit more frightened than anything. Then he looked away, back down at the kettle and the fire, because Jack didn’t say anything back, just stared at him, unblinking, with those seemingly lidless reptilian eyes — Eric had never seen eyes so blue on any kind of person or beast. They were incredible, but really rather off-putting when they were staring at you like that.

The pair of them stayed in silence like that for some time, with Eric occasionally casting glances up at Jack, who continued to stare at him as though there were nothing more interesting in the world, or perhaps as though he was considering running Eric out of his cave at any moment. Eric began to wonder how it could possibly be taking the water so long to boil, then remembered he was in an ice-cold cave in the heart of a mountain.

“You know,” he said, at length, casting another slightly hesitant look at Jack, who finally — finally! — blinked, as though he hadn’t been expecting Eric to speak again. “Forgive me for saying it, but you aren’t very much like what I’d been told to expect from a dragon.”

“Well, I haven’t _always_ been a dragon,” Jack said, sounding very put out about it. “I just crossed the wrong witch, that’s all.”

“A _witch?”_ Eric asked, amazed. That was almost more unbelievable than the fact that he was talking to a dragon, or even to a dragon who used to be something else; dragons, and other creatures born of the magical and fantastical, were accepted to exist, if in very small numbers, hidden away in the corners of the world. But humans were born of the mundane. The idea of a human being who could do enough magic to turn someone or something into a dragon was shocking to say the least.

“Not a very nice witch,” Jack grumbled. “Though he and I used to be friends.”

“Oh — so before you were a dragon, you were…?”

“A prince,” Jack said, and Eric felt his mouth drop open, because he had been going to say _a person_. 

“A _prince!”_ he sputtered loudly, his eyes going very wide. Far away, at the entrance to the cave, Signore snorted and dashed his hoof against a rock; the sound echoed toward them very dimly.

Jack frowned, an expression that honestly looked very strange on his large, angular face. “Are you just going to repeat everything I say?”

“No, of course not, I’m sorry. You’re just saying a _lot_ of incredible things,” Eric protested, flushing, but even as he spoke the wheels began to turn inside his head, and suddenly everything clicked into place. There were only so many princes who had gone missing within a reasonable timespan and might have been turned into dragons, after all. “Oh, good heavens. You’re Jack _Zimmermann!”_

Jack huffed and frowned some more, which was all the confirmation Eric needed, really. “I didn’t think you’d know who I was.”

“Of course I know who you are!” Eric cried, then thought the better of it too late, blushing a little. There had been plenty of discussion of Jack’s disappearance, of course, but that had been years ago, and not much of it had reached the southern kingdoms regardless; that wasn’t why Eric knew who Jack was. Eric knew who Jack was because Jack was a prince _and_ a knight, which evidently was not only accepted but expected in the far north. Jack had made a name for himself several times over at all of the most prestigious tournaments before his untimely disappearance and presumed death. Eric knew of him because he had all but idolized him, at the time. Jack Zimmermann had been everything he himself wanted to be.

And now he was a dragon.

Well, Eric supposed, things could be a lot worse. Surely King and Queen Zimmermann would at least be glad to know their son was alive, even if he was significantly more scaly now than he might have been previously.

“Does anyone else know you’re out here?” Eric asked, thankfully before Jack could ask how Eric supposedly knew so well who he was. “Your parents?”

“Yes, they’re more than aware,” Jack said, a little defensively. “My mother’s family has an estate here. They own this mountain, technically.”

“Oh,” Eric replied. That was a bit of a relief; no doubt King Zimmermann would come to the Samwell Tournament — he always did — and there was no way Eric could keep a secret like this from him, not when the whole continent had seen or at least heard of the way the man had mourned his son’s disappearance. It wasn’t exactly his place to get involved in their family’s politics, but still. That was the kind of secret no one should be asked to keep.

The kettle began to shriek; the noise was so unexpected, with Eric having almost forgotten that he was waiting for the water to boil at all, that he jumped nearly a foot off the ground, and even Jack startled. Eric took the excuse to turn away and fuss with the water and the tea leaves and process everything that had just been dumped on his head.

Prince Jack Zimmermann, long thought lost by most of the world, was in fact alive, but was living as a _dragon_ , because he had angered a witch who used to be a friend of his, and he had taken up residence in a mountain cave not far outside of Samwell. And Eric had more or less stumbled into him through no special fault of his own. He was sure that if he were to go down into town and tell this tale — not that he would — everyone would think he had taken leave of his senses entirely, if they didn’t think that of him already. 

The tea was quite strong, but tasted good; the flavor was different from what Eric usually drank back home, but then, back home, they drank their tea over ice, which he knew most from the north found a bit strange. He wondered suddenly if the tea and the kettle and everything were kept around for Jack’s mother and father. Did they visit often? Surely — even if the cookfire was for Jack himself — the tea was meant for human guests. It had certainly seemed to be Jack’s automatic response, to bring him back here for a cup, as soon as he’d decided not to throw Eric out on his ear.

“Do they visit often, your parents?” he asked, blowing gently on his cup of tea in between sips. Jack hummed, a remarkably sonorous noise, yet also startlingly melodic, given how aggressive many of his vocalizations had been thus far.

“Sometimes,” was all he said at first, and in a quite defensive voice. Eric bit his lip, and was just about to say that he’d meant no offense by the question when Jack somewhat reluctantly added, “They’re the only ones.”

“Oh,” Eric said, his voice sounding suddenly very small to his own ears. 

“It’s not — it’s nothing,” Jack said shortly, and gave a great, agitated swish of his tail that came very close to knocking over the cookfire, and Eric as well. Then, abruptly, he said, “You said you were competing in the tournament.”

“Yes,” Eric replied cautiously. Jack didn’t sound as dismissive as before, but it was nearly impossible, he found, to determine what he was thinking.

“But you’re a prince,” Jack clarified.

“Yes,” Eric repeated. 

“A prince from the south?”

“Yes.”

“Hm.” Jack hummed again, a low, rumbling sound from deep in his chest, and this time it was accompanied by thin streams of smoke — or perhaps steam — which curled from his nostrils. 

Eric waited, but it seemed he wasn’t going to say anything else; he looked thoughtful, though, and assessing, and he actually stretched his neck out a little further towards Eric as though to fully scrutinize him. Eric felt suddenly a little embarrassed at the state of his riding clothes; he didn’t look like much of a prince _or_ a knight right now.

But apparently Jack didn’t think so, because when he pulled his head back and swished his tail again — though thankfully much more calmly this time — he looked thoughtful, but not judgemental. “Are you any good?” he asked bluntly, and Eric could almost have laughed, if the question were coming from anyone else.

“I win tournaments down south, when I’m allowed to compete,” Eric told him with no small amount of pride. But then, with much more humility, he added, “Although I have been… struggling a bit to make a name for myself in the north. But proving my skills here will speak strongly to those back home who doubt me.”

Jack narrowed his great, round eyes. “They doubt you?”

“They doubt that a prince can be a knight,” Eric clarified. “It’s not done, where I come from. Princes are expected to learn history and law and political theory and economics, not — how was it my father put it? ‘Run around with swords drawn getting beaten about the head’?”

“Well, I certainly hope no one’s beating you about the head,” Jack said.

“No, not usually,” Eric replied, laughing a little, but then he sighed. “But unfortunately, my father’s perspective on the matter is quite common. Oh, it’s all well and good to _watch_ the tournaments, to pick a knight to favor, but if you should want to actually _participate…_ ”

“That sounds very strange,” Jack grumbled. “If I hadn’t wanted to train as a knight alongside my other duties, I would have been considered remiss. Weak, even.”

“I’m not sure that’s right either. I think we should get to choose things like that, if they don’t affect the wellbeing of the people.” Eric paused a moment, taking a deep drink of tea — his cup was nearly empty — and blushed a little; that had come out almost as whining, and he had a feeling that Jack was not the kind of person to look kindly on whining. “But that’s neither here nor there, I suppose.”

Jack let out a noise which Eric completely couldn’t place, one which seemed to be wholly draconic in origin — something between a hum, a growl, and a purr — but didn’t say anything in response to that, and after a moment more he said, “Samwell’s tournament is still the best, though. It’s a good place to prove yourself, if you can manage it.”

“Oh, yes,” Eric said. That, after all, was the same thought which had been spinning around his head for years now, as he trained and trained and desperately tried to convince his parents and advisors to let him go north to the tournament, just once, to try and make his name.

“Well,” Jack said. “The best of luck to you, then.” 

He still didn’t sound all that convinced of Eric’s skills — he sounded, in fact, like he very much thought that Eric would _need_ the luck — but then, it wasn’t as though Eric had had any real chance to prove himself. All they’d done was talk, and he had named a few achievements from tournaments back home, which were smaller and much less prestigious than those in the north, especially at Samwell. Still, the tone stung a bit.

“Thank you,” he said, unable to keep a note of defiance from his tone, and he frowned a little at Jack over the lip of his mug. “Though I’ve been training every day for as long as I’ve had a sword or a lance, so I hope if I do succeed, it will not be because of luck.”

Jack blinked for a moment, eyes wide, looking completely taken aback, but then the oddest thing happened: his expression sharpened for just a moment, his eyes narrowed until they were barely ice-blue slits in his dark face, and he _smiled_. It was a terrifying sort of smile, to be sure, full of far too many teeth, but it was unmistakable all the same, and it made Eric’s heart do a funny little flip.

“Good,” Jack said decisively. “Then, in that case, I hope you are able to train well between now and the tournament.”

Eric couldn’t help but to smile back, well aware that he was blushing because he could feel the burn in his cheeks. He tried to hide it by taking another sip of tea, but he had reached the bottom of the mug; there were only dregs left, which he swallowed with a tiny wince.

That lead him to thinking about how long he had been here, which was at least safer than thinking about the firm, steady, low tone of Jack’s voice, or the gleam in his eyes, or the way he was leaning in towards Eric slightly, or what it might have been like if in this moment he were shaped like a man instead of a dragon. Surely it had to be getting on toward afternoon now; he should really be getting on his way, and he certainly shouldn’t be letting himself repeat Jack’s words over and over in his head, trying to press every detail of the cadence and timbre and tone into his memory.

“Thank you very much for your hospitality,” he said politely, because he knew that if he didn’t mind his manners, his mother would somehow, impossibly, find out about it, even though he was currently in a dragon’s cave miles and miles and miles from home, and then he would never hear the end of it. “But I need to be heading back to town soon — I do have to train, after all, and I only brought so much food with me.”

“Of course,” Jack said, nodding, though he seemed to have mostly fixated on the idea of training. “The tournament is only a few weeks away.”

Eric didn’t comment on the fact that Jack knew exactly when the tournament was, despite surely having not been down to town in quite some time. He just nodded instead, and rinsed the mug out with a bit of the water from the kettle before setting it carefully back in the chest where he had found it, over against the cave wall.

Turning back, he paused a moment, looking over Jack again. He really was small, for a dragon, though this cave was very large. And, dragon or no, he had once been human, and Eric couldn’t imagine any human being living in this vast, cold, echoey cave, with only infrequent visits from their parents, and not getting at least a little bit lonely. He told himself that _that_ was his motivation for saying what he was about to say, and not anything more selfish.

“You know, if you would like,” he began, a little timidly, and then steeled himself when Jack didn’t immediately shout him down, “I know you said you don’t have many visitors besides your parents, and — well — while I’m in Samwell, anyway, perhaps I could come and visit you every so often.”

He found that he didn’t regret saying it at all, because rather than looking irritated or off-put, as he’d feared, Jack looked nothing so much as shocked. 

“You’d want to?” he asked dubiously, and Eric had to bite back an entirely inappropriate laugh at his tone.

“Of course I would!” he replied, not elaborating at all on any of the reasons why this was true — that he found Jack charming, in an odd, rough-around-the-edges sort of way, or that he’d been at least half-infatuated with Jack when he was younger from hearing stories of his wins at tournaments far and wide, or that, while he’d never met Jack when he was human, he was quite certain that Jack was the most beautiful dragon he had ever seen.

“Well, all right,” Jack replied, still sounding like he wasn’t entirely certain Eric wasn’t playing some sort of trick on him. “That would be…” He hesitated for a long moment, clearly searching for the right word. “Nice.”

 _Nice_ wasn’t exactly a glowing recommendation, but then, Jack didn’t seem like the most effusive sort of person. (Dragon? He was still a person, no matter what, Eric supposed; even without getting into the question of whether _other_ dragons could be considered ‘people,’ Jack certainly could.) Eric decided he could be more than satisfied with _nice_ , at least for now, and he smiled back, ducking his head a little.

“I suppose I had better walk you back out to the entrance,” Jack said after a moment, and though Eric was quite certain he could have found his way there himself — the cave was more or less a straight shot, without many branching paths — he simply nodded, and allowed himself to be lead.

“You know, for this being a cave in a mountainside and all, it’s really very nice,” he said as they walked, mostly just to make conversation, and Jack gave a little rumble that Eric thought might have approximated a laugh.

“Well, I wouldn’t want to live here otherwise, would I?” he said; Eric supposed he would probably much rather _not_ live here, or indeed live in any kind of cave, but there probably weren’t a whole lot of options for a dragon.

They walked the rest of the way to the mouth of the cave in silence, until Eric got a good look at it and saw that the light was starting to fade. He almost wanted to beg Jack’s hospitality and stay the night in the cave — not in the least because he very much wanted to spend more time with Jack — but it was still light enough that he and Signore could get a fair ways down the mountain before they needed to stop and make camp, and he really needed to be getting back to town sooner rather than later if he didn’t want his food supplies to run thin.

Jack slowed and stopped far enough from the cave’s entrance to avoid spooking Signore, which Eric appreciated, but close enough that they could still talk without shouting at each other across the echoey cave.

“I suppose this is goodbye for now, then,” Eric said, biting his lip a little. “Signore and I had best be getting home.”

“Your horse is named Signore?” Jack said, eyeing the horse in question a bit suspiciously. “Is he Italian?”

Eric felt himself blush a little. “Well, I got him when I was young. He’s Spanish, so I wanted to name him Señor Horse. Signore is better than that, at least.”

Jack snorted out a laugh — a puff of smoke came out of his nostrils, actually, which was slightly alarming, but the humor in his eyes was delighted, and not mean-spirited at all. “It is better than that,” he agreed, then hesitated a moment, his eyes dimming. “You really don’t have to come all this way just to visit me, you know. You should focus on training for the tournament.”

“Jack, I _want_ to come visit you,” Eric said emphatically, stepping back away from Signore and dropping his reins so that he could come back over to Jack instead. “Besides, coming all the way up here _is_ training, if you think about it. Climbing the mountain is like endurance training for Signore.” When Jack didn’t look convinced, he added hopefully, “And I’m sure you have some tips you can give me…?”

That made Jack’s face light up so quickly and so transparently that Eric had to stifle a giggle. He actually wriggled a little bit in excitement, like a cat about to pounce; Signore made a discomfited noise, but Eric found it incredibly adorable. (Which was a bit worrying in and of itself, really — it was probably ill-advised to go finding powerful, dragony princes adorable; that way could only be a path to ruin — but, oh, well. Eric had never been the best at avoiding trouble.) 

“Yes,” Jack said fiercely, and Eric quite manfully did not swoon at the little growl in his voice or at the way his eyes lit up, thank you. “You should bring your sword. And your lance. I bet this cave is big enough to joust in,” he added speculatively, with a gleam in his eye that, frankly, made Eric feel very worried.

Still, the cave probably _was_ big enough to joust in, if he could convince poor Signore to come inside a dragon’s cave, which, Eric decided, was a problem for another day. For today, all he did was smile sunnily at Jack and walk back over to his horse, who looked more than ready to be out of here, and back in his warm stable, probably.

“Well,” Eric said, gathering up the reins in his hand and preparing to mount, turning slightly to shoot another look back at Jack. “I’ll be back as soon as I can, all right?”

“Yes,” Jack replied, his huge blue eyes glittering eagerly. “I’ll be ready.”

“Me, too,” Eric said, though he found suddenly that he wasn’t quite ready to go, and heaved himself up onto Signore, and began to make his way back down the mountain, thoughts of dragons and princes and tournaments swirling madly in his head.

—

“Well,” Jack said, some weeks later, nosing at the small purse in Eric’s extended hand with some interest. “I’ll say you did perfectly well to prove a name for yourself. Coming fourth overall, when you had been practically unknown, is very impressive. Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” Eric replied, his cheeks rosy. He had been disappointed to get so far and yet not make it all the way, but he knew Jack was right; Jack, though they had grown closer over weeks of training together, was not exactly inclined toward telling nice little lies just to make him feel better. He wouldn’t offer his congratulations unless he meant them. “I couldn’t have done it without you, you know.” 

At this, Jack looked away, snorting, his great tail swishing. “Yes you could.”

“No, I couldn’t,” Eric countered, firmly. He was plenty sure of his own worth — he knew he’d come a long, long way, both in the last few weeks and over the past several years of training by himself, with Signore as his only companion. But he was equally sure of the value of Jack’s help, his expert advice and the keen eye with which he spotted all of Eric’s weaknesses, though of course it hadn’t always felt nice to have said weaknesses pointed out in very thorough detail.

Jack frowned. “You did well through your own hard work and skill. I wasn’t even there.”

“But at least some of that skill comes from training with you,” Eric said, and was treated to a very special sight: Jack ducked his head, turning away as though he couldn’t bear to look at Eric dead-on and hiding behind his wing a little, and a cloud of gray smoke suddenly puffed from him, shrouding him from view. Eric couldn’t be certain, even after having spent quite a bit of time with him recently and learning to translate dragon mannerisms into human ones, but he was almost sure that this was something akin to blushing.

“You don’t give yourself enough credit,” Jack grumbled, and Eric bit back a little rush of giggles. Jack looked so very _disgruntled_ , which was odd on his normally quite impressive — even foreboding — face. Dragons shouldn’t be able to look so incredibly cute, but that was something Eric had become entirely resigned to over the past few weeks of spending time with him.

“I think you’re the only person who would say so,” Eric said, shaking his head and grinning; he had already sent a letter home to tell his parents of his achievements in the tournament, and he could just picture his father’s response. _Very good, but see that it doesn’t go to your head. You still have duties at home,_ et cetera, et cetera… 

At this Jack turned back to look at him head-on, his expression hardening a little. “You have a right to be proud of your achievements. No one should begrudge you that.” He paused a moment, then added in a much softer voice, “ _I’m_ certainly proud of you.”

Eric felt not just his face, but indeed his chest, and his whole body, grow warm. “Thank you, Jack,” he said very quietly, though the sound carried well enough in the echoing emptiness of Jack’s cave.

They stood there together like that, just looking at once another, neither of them moving or saying a single word, for a stretch of time that seemed almost infinite. Eventually the silence became too much, and Eric’s heart began to feel too fragile, as though it were about to beat straight out of his chest and fall to the floor.

So he cleared his throat and said, “Actually, I — well, I had an idea of a way I could thank you for all your help.” He paused, summoned all his courage, and added, “And for your companionship, which means much more to me than your assistance in winning any tournament.”

Jack blinked at him. “You don’t need to — that’s not necessary.”

“But I _want_ to,” Eric told him, by now very much used to reassuring Jack that any effort that he made in their relationship, whether to visit Jack or to do what he was about to propose, which was quite a bit more involved, was out of his own affection and not some sense of obligation. He took a deep breath, bit his lip, and then admitted, “I don’t know very much about magic, but there are extensive libraries in Samwell, at the University and in the palace, and, well — I’ve been doing some research.”

Eric had told Jack more than enough stories about how he used to delight in evading his tutors to go riding instead for Jack to understand that he wasn’t normally the type to so much as set foot in a library. Jack froze, every part of his body going perfectly still, and said nothing.

“It took some time, and, actually, I got very lucky — I met a witch who was able to help me,” Eric continued. “Without her, I never would have gotten anywhere; the libraries don’t contain any really detailed magical texts.”

“My parents have looked before, my mother especially,” Jack murmured, sounding as though the words pained him a bit. “There was never anything to find.”

“But this witch, she helped me,” Eric said earnestly. “She had better texts, and she knew a lot herself, too. Apparently she’s worked with transformation magic before, though never anything on this scale. I didn’t tell her any specifics, just that I had met a dragon who used to be a man,” he hurried to add, becuase Jack liked his privacy and didn’t much like the idea of the rest of the world finding out that he now had wings and scales and claws.

“What did you find out?” Jack asked, the words cautious and measured; he could not have more clearly been trying to keep his expectations low.

“Well, there’s good news and bad,” Eric said. “The good news is…” He paused. “The witch I met believes that the spell _is_ reversible.”

Jack’s eyes slid shut, and an unreadable expression passed over his face; for a long moment, he was quiet. Then he said, “And the bad news?”

“She can’t reverse it herself,” Eric told him. “Only the witch who cast the spell can do that.”

Jack wilted, his neck drooping. “That’s very bad news indeed,” he muttered. “He’s going to be rather hard to convince.”

“It could take me ten years of standing outside his door and begging to convince him, and I would do it,” Eric said, his voice coming out rather fiercer than he had meant it to; Jack looked up at him, startled, and he blushed and looked away. Voice softening, he added, “Ten years, or twenty, or fifty. No matter what, I would do it, Jack.”

“I mean that much to you?” Jack asked, voice almost impossibly quiet.

“That much and more,” Eric admitted, and leaned across the space between them to brush a hand over the ridge of scales which crested over his eyes, giving the vaguest impression of eyebrows. Then, unable to bear the heart-pounding intensity and honesty of Jack’s gaze for a moment longer, he added in a much more teasing tone, “Besides, by all accounts you were quite handsome before you were turned into a dragon. I would very much like a chance to make that judgement for myself.”

Jack huffed out a chuckle. “Oh, so I’m not handsome now?”

“I didn’t say that!” Eric hurried to correct, flushing, but grinning all the same. “But it’s… different.”

“Very different,” Jack allowed, sounding amused in that quiet, almost impenetrable way of his. Then, after a moment’s pause, he added almost shyly, “I’d like nothing more than for you to see me as a man — the way I still think of myself. Not as… _this_.” He extended his wings for emphasis.

“I like you just as you are,” Eric said firmly. “But I’d like you as a man, too. I’d like to be able to go into town with you, and I’m sure your mother and father would be very glad to have you home.”

“I’d be glad to _go_ home,” Jack agreed softly, ducking his head almost to his chest, preening briefly at the scales there in a very catlike gesture. “Thank you, Eric.”

“You’re more than welcome,” Eric replied in an equally soft voice, smiling at him altogether helplessly. He was, in fact, helpless to do anything but look across at Jack and think just how very nice it would be to see him on two legs again, to see what those piercing blue eyes looked like in a human face. To hold him, even, if Jack would allow himself to be held.

His parents certainly weren’t going to be pleased with the idea of him jaunting off on a quest they knew nothing about, especially not after he’d already been gone so long for the tournament, but that was a problem for another day; he’d already told them about his intent to help Jack get his human life back, in the very same letter where he told them of his achievements in the Samwell Tournament, and had been quite clear that he had no idea how long this journey would take. But it was worth it; they could throw him out onto the streets when he returned, and it would be worth it. He couldn’t possibly leave Jack here alone, in this cold, empty cave, not when there was something to be done about it. Not when Jack could have a _home_ again.

“Do you think Signore will learn to like me eventually?” Jack asked, smiling his wide, toothy dragon’s smile.

Eric laughed; even after weeks of training together, while his horse could be said to _tolerate_ Jack, they certainly weren’t the best of friends, despite all of Jack’s efforts to the contrary. Eric knew _exactly_ why sugar cubes had suddenly appeared in the cave one day, and it certainly wasn’t so he could put them in his tea. 

“Well, if nothing else, we’ll have plenty of time to find out,” he said, and he wouldn’t have traded the warm look in Jack’s eyes for anything in the world. 

**Author's Note:**

> And, of course, they lived happily ever after.


End file.
